MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Syrian refugees have begun to return home thanks to the successes of the antiterrorist operation conducted by the Syrian Armed Forces with the assistance from Russia's Aerospace Force, Sheikh Ahmad Badredding Hassoun said on Thursday as he visited the 'Orthodox Christian Rus' in the Moscow Manege exhibition center.

"The refugees stranded in Europe now fled there from the crimes committed by terrorists and some of them are really returning to Syria now and this is happening after the victories won by the Syrian Army with the assistance from Russian pilots, as we can see," Sheikh Hassoun said.

Russia's peacekeeping mission

The Supreme Mufti congratulated Russia on the occasion of People's Unity Day, which the country observed on November 4. He pointed out this country's expansive human resource, adding that all the world religions were represented here.

"Now that the sons of Russia, the Russian pilots, are assisting Syria in the struggle with terrorism, they're performing Russia's lofty peacekeeping mission," said Sheikh Hassoun, whose sun was killed by the terrorists.

He said that the Islamic State terrorist grouping was made up of commonplace criminals who were misleading people by the guise of religiosity.

"They want to create a state but that's a deceit," Sheikh Hassoun said. "Jesus didn't create a state, and the Prophet Mohammed didn't create it either. They came to serve mankind, and that's why we the Syrians are building a secular state that serves all the nations living in it."

Struggle with criminals

As he met with the President of the Russian Imperial Palestinian Society, Sergei Stepashin, he thanked this public association for the humanitarian aid delivered to Syria regularly as of the first days of the military conflict there.

Stepashin said, on his part that a 13th consignment of aid gathered by the Palestinian Society would be taken aboard a jet of the Russian Ministry for Emergency Situations to Damascus in a few days' time.

"The people warring in the ranks of Daesh in Syria have never read the Quran, I think," he said. "They regular killers from the medieval highway. They killed your son and you pardoned them, and that's why we're standing by your side."

Stepashin asked Sheikh Hassoun to give his greetings to President Bashar al-Assad and the Patriarch of Antioch and the Whole of Orient, John X Yaziji, whose brother was abducted by terrorists two years ago and nothing has been known about his fate since then.